Longtime Director of Corrections Ashbel Tingley Wall, II, Dies at 72
Monahan Drabble Sherman Funeral Home
Longtime Director of Corrections Ashbel Tingley Wall, II, Dies at 72
Ashbel Tingley Wall, II was born on a U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka, Japan on August 6, 1953, where his father, John Wall, served as a naval officer during the Korean conflict. Upon John and Mary Wall’s return to Providence, where his father would later serve as president of Rhode Island Hospital Trust National Bank, A.T. attended The Gordon School and Moses Brown School. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, he attended Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude before attending Yale Law School. A.T. was the great-grandson of the late Frederick Brooks, president of Brooks Brothers, and a great-great-grandson of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process in the United States, and whose bust stands in Washington Square Park in New York City.
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The summer after his sophomore year at Yale, A.T. participated in a Study of the City internship that introduced him to the juvenile justice system in New Haven. He was captivated by the swirl of legal, social, and psychological issues present in the cases he handled. This discovery led him, after graduation from law school, to accept a position in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He later served as Director of The Manhattan Community Service Sentencing Project, a program of the Vera Institute of Justice that provided job training as an alternative to incarceration for non-violent repeat offenders.
A.T. returned to Rhode Island in 1985 and, after a brief stint as a policy advisor in the Governor’s office, he began his work at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC), where he spent the remainder of his career, including nearly two decades as Director. Upon his retirement, he was the longest-serving Corrections Director in the United States.
A.T. devoted his career at RIDOC to demystifying the work of rehabilitation, improving inmate health and education, and supporting ex-offenders’ reentry into life outside prison walls. During his tenure as Director, he made countless improvements to and innovations within the correctional system. He initiated, for example, a nation-leading medication-assisted treatment for inmates struggling with addiction and substance-use disorders. One of A.T.’s favorite initiatives was the NEADS dog-training program, which he introduced into RIDOC institutions. Under the careful supervision of correctional staff, inmates began training service dogs who would be placed with injured military veterans and other disabled persons to give companionship and support. One of A.T.’s most gratifying experiences was assisting a young ex-offender who had been incarcerated in his system to gain admission to Yale Law School. During A.T.’s tenure as Director, there were no homicides in and no successful escapes from secure RIDOC facilities, and no efforts by the federal courts to intervene in the department’s operations or policies.
A.T. kept himself available to his colleagues in state government and to the communities he served. He routinely visited community centers and social service agencies, attended festivals and religious gatherings around the state, and handed out his business card to anyone who asked. His impact on corrections extended well beyond Rhode Island. The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice called on him to evaluate confinement conditions in correctional facilities around the United States. He testified before the U.S. Congress about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. He participated in strategic conversations at The White House. He visited and advised correctional leaders in other nations who called on him to share the lessons of his long career.
When then-Governor Gina Raimondo announced A.T.’s retirement from the Department in 2018, she described him as “a treasure.”
Although he wore a Brooks Brothers suit every day to work, at home with his family A.T. was considerably less buttoned up. He adored what he always called “Top-40” music (as a wedding present, his wife, Maria, gave him a 1962 Seeberg jukebox), and he wove passages from some of his favorite songs into “The Birthday Medley”—a joyfully eye-roll-provoking composition ritually sung at family celebrations. Every June 3 he called his son Harrison to serenade him with the opening lines of Ode to Billy Joe. A.T. donned the same shorts, hiking boots and vivid orange sweatshirt for treks in the White Mountains and vigorous walks around the neighborhood, usually accompanied by Chum or Charlie, two Labrador retrievers who grew up with the family and to whom A.T. was devoted. Despite the extraordinary demands of his work, A.T. made sure to have dinner at home, attend school concerts, plays, and sporting events, and to enjoy time on family vacations.
A.T. was a lifelong Episcopalian, and his faith energized both his commitment to public service and his devotion to his family. On one occasion a number of years ago, A.T.’s work phone started ringing at 2 AM. A police patrolman in a local town had stopped a car whose owner had accumulated unpaid parking tickets. Upon seeing the officer, the driver, a refugee and sole survivor of a family who had been exterminated during the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, collapsed and was unable to speak. Back at the station, the lieutenant found A.T.’s business card in the man’s wallet and called him. A.T. rose, donned his customary suit and tie, and drove to the station. He helped the man address the problem of his unpaid tickets, drove him home, and then continued on to the Department of Corrections to start his day.
Another time, A.T. found himself in a key meeting with fellow Cabinet members and the Governor. When his phone rang and he rose quickly to take the call, everyone froze: What could be important enough to interrupt a Cabinet meeting? An escape? A crisis at the institutions? The Governor rose immediately to give A.T. an appropriate setting for the conversation: “Here, Director”, he said graciously. “Please use my office”. With the door closed, A.T. answered the phone. His son Ash was on the line: “Hey, Dad,” he said. “I need my practice uniform. Have you finished the laundry?”
A.T. is survived by Maria DeCarvalho, his wife of 44 years; his children, Harrison Holley Wall and Ashbel Tingley Wall, III; his son-in-law, Robert Jones; his daughter-in-law, Adrienne Healey; his grandchildren, Holley Jones and Alton Healey-Wall; his sister, Mary Brooks “Polly” Wall; his nieces and nephew, Mary Coe (Thomas Kuhn) and Livy Coe and Annie Daly (Jon Gentry), and Will Daly, and his brother-in-law and sister-in law, Mel and Carol DeCarvalho.
Funeral services will be held at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence on Tuesday, December 16 at 11 AM. Burial will be private. Gifts in A.T.’s memory may be made to Community Preparatory School in Providence, whose mission A.T. admired. https://www.communityprep.org.